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For a guitarist who has just been voted the best acoustic guitarist in the world in Totalguitar’s online poll, Mike Dawes certainly knows how to make a left turn. He’s joined a band, he’s playing electric and it sounds like nothing we’ve heard from him before.
“We were listening to a lot of The Midnight, as well as Toto, Peter Gabriel, Michael Jackson, INXS and things like that,” Mike tell us about the synth-heavy Nik Mystery – his new trio with Periphery vocalist Spencer Sotelo and Finnish production ace Jukka Backlund – who have just dropped their debut EP When. Mike’s bringing the Nile Rodgers funk and the Lukather leads to the table and he couldn’t be happier to be picking up an electric (and using a plectrum) again… “Honestly, one of the reasons I wanted to pursue a project like this was to force me to get back into it,” the Somerset-based guitarist explains. “Electric guitar brings me such joy but there is so little time for it on the road, apart from my work with Justin Hayward where I get to tickle a Tele for a bit.”
Mike’s role in the band is very much song-serving, though his Evh-esque break on the song So is a beaut. Eddie’s tone fed into his rig for the recording a little too; “The leads were played on the neck pickup of my Dimarzio-loaded Ernie Ball Axis. I wanted that classic EVH sound but with a bit of a tubey growl. You can hear that at the end of Drive.”
The challenge now is fitting live dates around three busy schedules: “As soon as we have a fanbase to play for, we’ll be out,” Mike assures us. “Our little baby band is just warming up.”